Addicted to producing web content since early 2001, I've blogged across several platforms and have written professionally for varied publications, including True/Slant, where I had a regular music column. Whether my blogs or columns were mostly about politics, current events or pop culture, the constant thread that ran through them was music. Even when writing about controversial or divisive topics, a simple piece where music is the focus always produced a commonality that could bring people together.
My first memory is of dancing to the Moody Blues' "Go Now" when I was three years old. Since then, almost every memory I have is tied to a song. I hope to bring that personal relationship with music to these pages, to take you along on my journey where I sift through genres and styles, through albums and song and introduce you to new sounds and find ways to make you rethink what you've already heard.

Don't Believe The Billboard Charts -- Rock Isn't Dead

We’ve been hearing the phrase “rock is dead” since The Who first uttered it in 1974. The proclamation has gotten louder as time marched on, but it’s really no more true than it was back when Odds and Sodds was released.

You may want to contest that. You may have proof rock is dead. The Grammys, for instance, where the “rock” category featured the jangly folksiness of Mumford and Sons, would be your first exhibit. Or the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where one has to try to cram Muse into a rock label in order to find just one representative of rock among the leaders. Maybe you can point to the fact that the New York metro area, one of the biggest markets in the world, has no real rock station to speak of, its last station going off the air in favor of sports talk just a few weeks ago.

The truth is, rock is out there. Maybe it’s not the rock and roll you know and love but it’s rock and there’s a distinction between the two: Rock and roll is what my parents listened to. Rock and roll is Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. Rock is the monster that swallowed rock and roll whole, chewed it up , spit out Led Zeppelin and The Who and proceeded to evolve, devolve and re-evolve over and over again.

It’s hard to define today what rock has become, as the path from the 1960s to now has taken off on so many meandering side roads its hard to even count all the genres and subgenres, let alone have a conversation about their definition within the realm of rock music.

The problem with talking about rock as a living, breathing presence is those who want to declare it dead are generally those who are stuck in a belief that every band has to be prescribed a specific genre, that calling them “rock” isn’t enough. Instead they drill down until they’ve dug up a subgenre so deep it’s five times removed from the original rock label and cast off as something else entirely. Which is not fair, as rock is the umbrella under which so many bands fall and to say the genre as a whole is dead is to put a toe tag on all the subgenres as well. It’s not that the genre of rock should remain untouched or that subgenres are unnecessary; in a time when searching for music requires research skills, the need to specifically narrow down what you are looking for is a bonus feature rather than a bug. Still, the genres which fall under the rock category should still recognize themselves as rock, for that genre is the sum of its whole.

Maybe defining rock as a genre is where the conversation needs to start. Let’s go to Wiki:

Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define.

Let’s add this: rock has a certain joy to it, a celebratory feel beneath the heavy bass and driving beats. Rock always feels like you’re holding something with a pulse in your hands and forever feels like it needs to feed off your enjoyment of it in order to stay alive. Rock is not necessarily an emotional music, but it is an emotional experience.

Rock is not things. Rock is not afraid. Rock is not radio friendly or hit driven. Rock is not what the band plays during the last dance at your sister’s wedding. Rock is not complacent, cooperative or content to just be. It exists for a reason and that reason is not to sell you a t-shirt. It exists to make you feel, and whether that feeling comes out in a fist pump, a head bang or power drumming on the steering wheel, it’s there beneath every sweeping note, every tortured lyric, every awkward time change.

Black Lips! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So where is this rock, you ask? That’s the thing. You have to ask. You have to look. You have to turn stones, move boulders and go down rabbit holes of “you might like this if you like this” links to get to it. But it’s there.

It’s in Miami, Florida under the name Torche, a bombastic sludge band full of power and fury, signifying everything. It’s in Sacramento, where the Deftones are still churning out their specific brand of experimental metal and Trash Talk, a hardcore band is playing a devastating set of power and might. It’s in Atlanta, Georgia with the heavy metal of Mastodon and where the Black Lips turn out garage style rock reminiscent of MC5 who, by the way, produced the greatest rock song ever made. Rock is hanging in New Jersey with Titus Andronicus and the Gaslight Anthem and in Southern California with Queens of the Stone Age and Northern California with Ceremony. It’s big in Japan with Boris and making noise in Canada with Metz. It’s right in your face with the tried and true, with Soundgarden and Linkin Park. Rock is everywhere. It’s not only alive but thriving. You have to look past the whole construct of genres and labels and realize that rock is the sum of its parts. It’s the finding the various parts that’s the journey to realizing rock is a living, breathing organism that’s a long way from the “rock is dead” pastiche ringing true.

And if The Who are no longer considered rock under the criteria set forth, at least they once recognized what the lasting impact of their origins should be:

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Here’s my take on Dave Grohl – I love him as a drummer. I love him not in the Foo Fighters. I feel like the Foo Fighters are a means to an end, something he does that enables him to do other things, like be in Queens of the Stone Age or make an album like Probot(for the record I am a fan of The Colour and Shape and pretty much hate every other FF album).

It is especially alive if you are actively seeking it out. It’s out there in the clubs and bars. There’s kids bringing three chords and the truth and reverb and distortion to their friends. There’s folks with day jobs bashing out their aggressions in cramped and sweaty practice spaces. Some of the that rock makes it on to bytes or vinyl or acetate. Some of that recorded material makes it to the ears of others. And it’s not hard to find. It takes a little effort but it’s out there. Sure 90% of it is derivative dreck, but that is no different from the way things were 40 years ago. Just find what you love and help support it. Buy that CD after the show. Download that EP from Bandcamp that your friend told you about. Or heck, start you’re own band. It’s not too late. Believe me you. Just don’t sit there and comment “They don’t make music like this anymore…” on the YouTube video for April Wine’s “Sign of the Gypsy Queen”.

Depends on your definition of ‘ rock ‘ . Of course it has changed since the ‘ rock n roll ‘ years . It has evolved over time into ; heavy rock , heavy metal , thrash metal and experimental rock . We can all label different bands and place them into those categories . But for me real ‘ rock ‘ is the sound of the old AC/DC with Bon Scott . That distinctive bass , drums ,gritty vocals and of course the ear piercing guitar riffs from Angus young There are many great rock bands out there doing their stuff . Its great to see the change , from , especially the depressing 80′s and even 90′s .. No rock isn’t dead . It is has never been dead and its back with vengeance .

Rock is not dead indeed, it’s more alive than ever, embedded into more styles than it ever was, you got Dubstep with Rock, You got Metal music, you got indie rock, folk rock, blues rock, Rock is actually the best selling music genre today if we take all the subgenres and put them together. From Tom Waits latest album to Mumford and Sons to Aerosmith to Alex clare and real old school rock like Motorhead and the likes. ROCK IS VERY MUCH ALIVE and it is the backbone of the music industry in my personal opinion!

Bravo for creating this column, and I heartily agree with your sentiments. Rock in this era has become something not easy to define or categorize, but it retains some elements that it always had from the beginning: a pulsing, joyful, strong means of expressing emotion. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts and discovering modern artists through you (I tend to be stuck in past greats of rock, though, unlike you, I adore the Foo Fighters as a progression of what I loved about rock in the ’90s and ’00s — which I discovered late due to living in a foreign country with no rock stations).

I agreed with so much and then read the sentence: “It’s right in your face with the tried and true, with Soundgarden and Linkin Park.”

Although I waited a long time for Soundgarden’s return, I have to heartily disagree in that Linkin Park do not rock. There is a simple reason for this: one cannot rock to a backing track. Rock survives despite the efforts of Linkin Park. And that this is even up for discussion throws all kinds of things into question.

All musical genres eventually die. Or ossify. Rock is absolutely, positively dead as the proverbial doornail. The canonical bands — The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and The Who — got there first and scorched the earth. Whatever there was to do in the genre has been done and done better than anyone since.

It was a great ride while it lasted. The gods left us with an astounding legacy of immortal music. But the gods themselves were mortal; most of the best of them died young, the rest are almost all caricatures of themselves. The music will live on for a long time, but the genre itself — interms of making new Rock music — is finished.

“It exists for a reason and that reason is not to sell you a t-shirt.” - Is it ironic that buying a t-shirt helps with motivation towards buying the actual recording? - Baroness’ most recent album ‘Yellow & Green’ completely blew me away, and I had absolutely decided that I would buy the album regardless, but adding a t-shirt to my online order just made it all that much sweeter.

The arguments for and against ‘Rock is Dead’ are both relevant. Consider Soundgarden’s new album ‘King Animal’: The songs make the band sound very much alive, yet the songs don’t bring anything new to Rock. Now I would never argue that they should, afterall, any style of music has the potential to lead itself down a cul-de-sac trying to create something new, in the same way that it can just peter out and fade by not doing anything new; but Rock is most certainly “not complacent, cooperative or content to just be” – leave that to Pop music, with it’s eye for creating specifically aimed at the charts. ‘King Animal’ makes you feel like Soundgarden were not content to just let things be, in the same way that Baroness were not content to continue down the same Sludge Metal path they had begun on. Rock’s originality may be dead, but Rock’s legacy and creative spark is very much alive!

I disagree with some of what you’ve said. First of all, there is not as much a difference between ‘rock and roll’ and ‘rock’ as you indicated. It’s the same genre, but as the genre evolved over time, the name shortened. Does traditional ‘rock and roll’ (Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, etc.) sound different from later ‘rock’ (The Who, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC)? Sure, but within the long-established latter-day version of the rock genre, there are plenty of other sounds that don’t immediately resemble each other either (U2, Pearl Jam, Muse, Mumford & Sons). Yet, it’s all rock, whether it’s The Beach Boys or The Beastie Boys. Lastly, there might not be a big central contemporary rock station in New York City like back in the heyday of WNEW-FM, but there’s still Q104 for classic rock, WNYU offering New York University’s take, WDHA from New Jersey, The Peak up in the Hudson Valley, WSIA out of Staten Island, and WBAB over in Long Island. Also, as more New Yorkers get with the times, they find even more options from satellite, cable, and internet radio.

There have been a few counter articles to rock’s sorry state but I feel they’re missing the forest for the trees. Sure, rock music is still being made. Just like jazz or classical, it will always be made. What rock has lost is its vibrancy, its youth, and, more than anything, its cultural relevance.

Deftones, Queens of the Stone Age, Soundgarden, Linkin Park, Mastadon – these are all bands that are at least a decade old. They’re aging in a genre that thrives, if not outright requires, young blood. The elder statesmen of rock all make a respectable showing but the feeling that their best days are all solidly behind them is unavoidable. The concert venues keep getting smaller, the hits farther apart and less memorable.

Rock has absolutely changed over the last 50 years. But the problem isn’t that it’s evolved from blues rock to metal to southern rock to thrash to glam to grunge to industrial to nu metal. It’s that it’s *not evolving at all* anymore. Where’s the new Sabbath or Skynard or Metallica or Guns N Roses or Nirvana or Nine Inch Nails or Linkin Park, that band that explodes a genre and packs stadiums?

I listen to the radio and it feels like everything just stopped in 2004. Getting a new song from a new artist feels like spotting a rare bird in the wild, its appearance unordinary and all too fleeting.

I was a true rock fan. I was in high school at the tail end of the punk and new wave era and still in my 20s during the Grunge era. Loved them both. And loved and appreciated the before-my-time 60s and 70s rock. It was awesome. While Rock may not be completely dead it’s on it’s last leg, and it breaks my heart to say so. Cochella 2013 is going on right now. The headliners for two of the three nights all formed in the 80′s and peaked in the 90s (Red Hot Chili Peppers and Blur and Stone Roses). The only headliner that is contemporary is Phoenix, and I think that speaks for itself. There were a few glimmers of a rock comeback with Garage Rock blipping on the radar screen in the early 2000s before falling flat, and then MGMT’s 2007 awesome debut, then not much. That’s six years since anything exciting. I don’t think rock will completely die, at least not in my lifetime, but it may have just run out of juice. And that’s a shame for the world. So what are young people left with… Hip Hop and Lady Gaga. Please tell me it’s not so.